blonde poker forum

APAT Side event
£20 + £5 Buy in.   37 Runners.  7 left.  Pays 4 places.
Blinds 600/1200  30 min clock

First of all, i dont play much Omaha, so bear with me if this all seems standard.
I'm joint Chip Leader with approx 50K and in the BB.

The other joint CL is in MP and bets 3000, which gets called by the button, and the SB.  I have  6d 4d 7s 7c and decide to make the call.

Pot is now: 12K
Flop

 7d 9h Kd

SB who has circa 20K, and is a very good Omaha player now pots it.
Me to act, with 2 players behind including other CL who opened.

What to do?

We're the BB yh?

Pot it now you have absolutely no other option but this HAS to be a fold preflop every single time in a tournament - and this is the exact reason, PLO tourneys are about BIG CARDS.

If this was a cash game and everyone was sat with decent stacks then closing the action like you were i'd defo call even though it's a pretty ugly hand but in a tourney its an abso mandatory fold pre-flop

Going to assume one of the bigger stacks behind wakes up with a monster and we bust which is slighty unlucky but we put ourselves in this spot when there was no need.

Hi Darren,

I'm very much with TPAPKALD (The Piss Artist Previously Known As Lil Dave) on this.

These hands get us in SO much trouble when we hit.

There are SO MANY combos of holdings which will like that flop, & our entire Tourney will rest on that single pre-flop call now.

I think the call pre is an unforced error. Personally, though I find it difficult, I try & discipline myself to bin these. They are Lady Gaga hands. They look nice on the surface, but not so much underneath. As played, of course, we now have no choice but to try & go all the way with Miss Gaga. Not a nice prospect, as we have no idea how she will turn out.

Cash game, different case entirely, as long as we are not miles deep.

I instinctively do this really daft thing (& I DO mean daft...) when I am dealt any hand in PLO.  

I turn my 4 card hand into 2 card (Texas) holdings, & I like to have at least 3 x 2 card hands, preferable BIG cards, too.  How many 2 card hands do we have here?

7-7, that is about it.

Now factor in that the Blinds are big, & we can no longer go fishing, any hand we play we may find ourselves all-in.

There is a world of difference between  7-7-6-4, &, say, to try & find something similar in construction, Q-Q-J-9.  

I don't like doing it, but I just groan, & fold pre with this sort of hand late in a Tourney, especially when we are so close to the win.

Anyway, I hope you cashed, or even won it. ;)

Tikay owning pha with lady GaGa references  ;tightend;

Hand selection very important in PLO, Tikay says his method is daft and granted there are more technical methods for hand selection but it's certainly NOT daft.

It's extremely difficult to play OOP in PLO, even against weaker players the only way to combat the disadvantage you face being OOP is to have "nut hands" hand that make the top end of wraps and striaght draws, NUT fush draws, big 2pairs and high sets - that way we can play our hands really aggressively (because we can make the nuts) and take our disadvantage away a little bit by putting his (generally) weaker hands under pressure with aggression we CAN ONLY apply if we have strong starting hands.

This doesn't help with the hand here too much here but it's very important to think about. Playing online against a variation of styles and types of player the single biggest thing I know 100% I can super exploit against any opponent is peeling too wide from the blinds, it's so easy to punish people for it.

Phil Ivey cannot make money with this hand in this spot.

As played though you have to go all-in only other option is to fold, calling is out of the question because you could get called in another spot and you are going to hate literally every turn card (diamonds 5,6,8,T,Q,J and you're not even absolutely loving life on a King) and you're hand with stacks as they are is just too good to fold. Just further backs up why we don't wanna call pre-flop we flop a set and a flush draw and we're kind of hating our life, how many better flops are there for us?

Loving the analysis here. Really insightful.

Many thanks.